Wild card Abdullah Shelbayh may be the lowest-ranked man at the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM, but the Jordanian showcased his immense potential on Wednesday night.

Entering Jeddah at a career-high of No. 185 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, the 20-year-old downed Alex Michelsen 4-2, 1-4, 4-0, 4-0 to pick up his fourth Top 100 win. After World No. 97 Michelsen levelled the match with a powerful second set, Shelbayh dominated the final two sets by moving his opponent around the court with majestic ball control.

The result moves Shelbayh to 1-1 on the week and puts him in strong position to qualify for the semi-finals out of the Red Group.

“Having the opportunity to play here now to finish the year, I couldn’t ask for a better end to the year,” he said post-match. “I appreciate all the support throughout the week that I’ve been receiving already, of course throughout the year and from the Arab world especially.”

Shelbayh thrilled the Jeddah crowd with his shotmaking and tallied 26 winners, including seven aces, in the victory. He will finish his group campaign against Hamad Medjedovic on Thursday, when Michelsen will meet Luca Van Assche.

The Dallas Open on Wednesday announced that from 2025 the tournament will be held at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco – the Dallas Cowboys World Corporate Headquarters and Training Facility. The Cowboys are a National Football League team.

The move comes in conjunction with the tournament’s upgrade to the ATP 500 level from 2025, which was announced earlier this month. Doha and Munich will also be upgraded to ATP 500 events.

The Dallas Open is currently held at the Styslinger/Altec Tennis Complex, which is on the campus of Southern Methodist University. The tournament moved to the city in 2022 and has been won by Reilly Opelka and Wu Yibing.

“We are thrilled that the Dallas Open has been chosen as a new ATP 500 tournament,” Tournament Director Peter Lebedevs said. “We want to thank our longtime friend and Dallas local John Isner, who was very supportive of our effort to take the Dallas Open to the 500-level. We’re very excited for the thousands of enthusiastic tennis fans in the North Texas region. We’ve been building to this, and we will continue to improve all aspects of the tournament for everyone involved.”

Charlotte Jones, Owner & Chief Brand Officer for the Dallas Cowboys, said: “The success of this action-packed tournament over such a short time makes it a natural draw for sports fans who flock to Ford Center at The Star in Frisco.

“This facility and campus was built not only as the World Corporate Headquarters for the Dallas Cowboys, but also to host world class events like this one, and we’re thrilled to host the stars of pro tennis at Ford Center at the Star in Frisco.”

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Flavio Cobolli cracked the Top 100 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings in October shortly after winning his second ATP Challenger Tour title. The 21-year-old, who reached the quarter-finals at the ATP 250 event in Munich in April, made his major main-draw debut at Roland Garros in May, where he faced Carlos Alcaraz in the opening round. The Florence native is one of two Italians competing at the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM.

But what is Cobolli like off-court? ATPTour.com caught up with the World No. 100 to talk about his perfect day without tennis, his love for football and more…

If you could have dinner with three people, who would they be and why?
I will invite Daniele De Rossi, he’s a big football player in Rome. He’s my idol outside the court. Also Cristiano Ronaldo, and Novak Djokovic because I started to play tennis because of him and Fabio Fognini. I know Fabio, so I will choose Novak.

Describe your perfect day if you are not playing tennis.
I will sleep for a long time. Then I will hang out with my girlfriend. Play padel with my friends and play a football match. Then I will go to the stadium to watch AS Roma. I am a big fan of AS Roma. I have a tattoo for them.

If you had to choose between attending a music concert or a sporting event, what would you choose and why?
Sport event. My main sport outside of tennis is football, but I don’t like to watch tennis. So if I can choose between a tennis match and a football match, I would go to watch football.

Do you remember Italy winning the men’s European Championships two years ago?
Yeah, I watched the first match because I was in Rome and the others I watched on TV.

If you weren’t a tennis player, what job would you want?
I’d be a football player for sure, or a fireman.

Did you play football when you were younger?
I started to play tennis at two and then I changed to football. When I played football when I was young, I played four days a week and two days of tennis. Then I chose at 14 to go back to tennis. If I stayed in that way, maybe now I’d be in Serie A. (Laughs).

What is the most interesting thing you’ve done in your life?
I jumped into a swimming pool from 15 metres.

Who are your best friends on tour?
My best friend is Matteo Gigante. We started to play tennis at the same time. I miss him here. The situation with Luca Nardi is the same, we started to play at the same time and he is also a big friend.

What’s something you’ve learned playing this year?
I learned a lot of things but the important thing is work hard day by day. Because if you stopped for five hours, you stopped for one day. So you lose one day.

Jannik Sinner and his coaches, Darren Cahill and Simone Vagnozzi, have been honoured with nominations in the 2023 ATP Awards, with nominees revealed today for the four player-voted categories and for Coach of the Year.

Sinner has been nominated for Most Improved Player of the Year, following a season in which he rose to a career-high No. 4 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings and won four titles from seven finals. He is up against Italian Davis Cup teammate Matteo Arnaldi and Americans Christopher Eubanks and Ben Shelton in this category. The 22-year-old Sinner also receives a nod for the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award, which will feature a first-time winner with Carlos Alcaraz, Grigor Dimitrov and Hubert Hurkacz among the other nominees.   

Meanwhile, Cahill and Vagnozzi have been nominated in the Coach category alongside Craig Boynton (Hubert Hurkacz), 2022 winner Juan Carlos Ferrero (Carlos Alcaraz), Goran Ivanisevic (Novak Djokovic) and Bryan Shelton (Ben Shelton). Ivanisevic guided Novak Djokovic to a record eighth finish as ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by Pepperstone this season. 

Arthur Fils, the top seed at this week’s Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM, is one of five nominees for Newcomer of the Year, which includes #NextGenATP players who broke into the Top 100 for the first time in 2023.

Nominees for Comeback Player of the Year, Most Improved Player of the Year and the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award are determined by an International Tennis Writers’ Association (ITWA) vote. Coach of the Year nominees are selected through first-round voting by ATP coaches.

ATP Awards winners, including Fans’ Favourite, will be revealed during Awards week, starting 11 December. Fans can vote for their favourite singles player and doubles team through Friday, 1 December.

View the complete list of 2023 ATP Awards nominees:

VOTED BY PLAYERS

Comeback Player of the Year: The player who has overcome serious injury in re-establishing himself as one of the top players on the ATP Tour.

Dominik Koepfer
Gael Monfils
Jan-Lennard Struff
Alexander Zverev

Most Improved Player of the Year: The player who reached a significantly higher Pepperstone ATP Ranking by year’s end and who demonstrated an increasingly improved level of performance through the year.

Matteo Arnaldi
Christopher Eubanks
Ben Shelton
Jannik Sinner

Newcomer of the Year: The #NextGenATP player who broke into the Top 100 of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings for the first time in 2023 and made the biggest impact on the ATP Tour this season.

Flavio Cobolli
Arthur Fils
Alex Michelsen 
Dominic Stricker
Luca Van Assche

Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award: The player who, throughout the year, conducted himself at the highest level of professionalism and integrity, who competed with his fellow players with the utmost spirit of fairness and who promoted the game through his off-court activities.

Carlos Alcaraz
Grigor Dimitrov
Hubert Hurkacz
Jannik Sinner

VOTED BY COACHES

Coach of the Year: Nominated and voted on by fellow ATP coach members, this award goes to the ATP coach who helped guide his players to a higher level of performance during the year.

Craig Boynton (Hubert Hurkacz)
Darren Cahill and Simone Vagnozzi (Jannik Sinner)
Juan Carlos Ferrero (Carlos Alcaraz)
Goran Ivanisevic (Novak Djokovic)
Bryan Shelton (Ben Shelton)

Arthur Fils demonstrated his top-seed credentials at this year’s Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM on Wednesday when he dispatched Flavio Cobolli 4-1, 4-2, 4-2 in 59 minutes.

The Frenchman came out firing his first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting with the Italian, outmanoeuvring Cobolli with his weight and depth of shot to improve to 2-0 in Green Group play. Fils undertook the ‘SIU’ celebration, associated with football star Cristiano Ronaldo, following his win.

“I played very nice today,” said Fils. “I served very good, and I was moving well on the court, so I am very happy about it. Tomorrow I have a good match against a great opponent. He already beat me once this year, so let’s see what I can do.”

A very high-level performance 👏

Arthur Fils puts on a show @nextgenfinals 📈#PerformanceRating combines #InAttack, #ConversionScore, #StealScore, and #ShotQuality to measure a player’s performance over the course of a match#TennisInsights | @atptour |@nextgenfinals pic.twitter.com/YeQDSHsxNY

— Tennis Insights (@tennis_insights) November 29, 2023

Fils, who defeated Luca Nardi in five sets in his opening match, will meet Dominic Stricker in his final round-robin clash. Stricker and Cobolli both hold 1-1 records going into their final matches. Italian Cobolli faces countryman Nardi, who is 0-2, on Thursday.

Fils is aiming to become the sixth champion at the 21-and-under event, joining Top 10 stars Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner and Stefanos Tsitsipas

Earlier this year the 19-year-old Fils lifted his maiden tour-level title in Lyon, while he reached the title match in Antwerp. He is playing at a career-high No. 36 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings this week.

Physicality Index Insights
Cobolli was unable to push Fils into the red zone, making him perform a high percentage of explosive movements. In this match, Cobolli did all of the fast and intense movements, accumulating 72% more high speed distance than Fils. Fils was able to keep his Physicality Index way below his season average of 7.4. It was actually his lowest Physicality Index rating of the entire season, only reaching a 5.3. This was largely due in part to Fils being in attack over one-third of the points, and keeping the points short (avg. rally length 3.5).

The ATP and Tennis Data Innovations (TDI) will deliver unprecedented insights at the 2023 Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM. Using state-of-the-art tracking metrics, the insights will assess the physical capacity required to compete at the highest professional level of our sport.

Read more to learn about Wednesday’s matchups in Jeddah.

Dominic Stricker vs. Luca Nardi

Day Day two of the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM kicks off with Dominic Stricker facing Luca Nardi. These two players have contrasting gamestyles and physical performance profiles. Stricker has the lowest distance and workload per minute of any athlete in the Next Gen ATP Finals. Luca Nardi’s style of play is going to be geared more towards slightly higher intensities, using his speed to get him out of trouble. As you compare yesterday’s output from both their matches, Nardi performed almost 40% more explosive movements than Stricker.

Keys to the Match
Can Nardi push Stricker off the baseline and force Stricker to perform a distance above his season average of 1.4 kilometers. Or can Stricker take control of the point early in the rally, forcing Nardi into performing a higher ratio of high speed distance compared to his overall distance (12%).

Arthur Fills vs. Flavio Cobolli

In tennis, the best players start out each match looking to execute their tactical gameplan on their terms. Wednesday will be no different when Arthur Fils takes on Flavio Cobolli. Fils will look to come out and play his aggressive baseline game, dictating with the serve and the forehand, trying to keep his high speed distance and explosive movements to a minimum. Cobolli, is a solid baseliner, who uses his legs as an advantage, is going to try and turn this into a match of movement, as he is very comfortable defending for extended periods of time. Cobolli covers the most distance per minute out of all the Next Gen ATP Finals competitors.

Keys to the Match
Can Cobolli push the Physicality Index (PI) of Fils above an 8.5, by making him perform a high percentage of explosive movements in and out of the corners. Fils would like to see low PI numbers, by playing more deep through the middle of Cobolli, limiting Cobolli’s movement early in the point, and then looking to finish to the outside third of the court.

Luca Van Assche vs. Hamad Medjedovic

Luca Van Assche has proven this year that he can recover after multiple high volume and intensity matches. In yesterday’s first-round match, Van Assche had the highest Physical Index Rating, reaching a 9 against Abdullah Shelbayh in four sets. He will be playing an opponent, Hamad Medjedovic, who also played a very long five-set match that saw him begin to cramp late in the fifth. Both of these matches had 27 minutes of active ball striking, but their physical outputs looked extremely different. Van Asshe covered 23% more distance, worked 25% harder, covered 70% more high speed distance, and had 43% more explosive movements, which led to a 17% higher Physical Index.

Keys to the Match
Van Assche is known to be able to handle high volume and intensity matches, and recover quickly. Can Van Assche come out early in the match, use his high speeds and explosive movement to make Medjedovic play one more shot, forcing Medjedovic into a workload of over 33 units per active minute of match time.

Abdullah Shelbayh vs. Alex Mickelson

Many people think that time on court is all the same. Comparing the first round matches of Abdullah Shelbayh and Alex Mickelson, they both had the same amount of active time on court. Shelbayh worked much harder in the same amount of active time, having a workload that was 10% higher than Mickelson. That means Shelbayh put 10% more work on his legs over the course of his match than Mickelson. The one thing we don’t have any way of measuring is how the late finish will affect Mickelson’s recovery. The hard match and late finish could mean trouble for most athletes the next day.

Keys to the Match
The player who can manage their energy early on in the match, and get their opponent off balance by making them change direction with high intensity explosive movements, will have the upper hand. The player who has the fewest explosive movements should win this match.

Rafael Nadal recently confirmed he will play again. Another sporting legend making his return, golfer Tiger Woods, reflected Tuesday on his friend Nadal’s comeback in a press conference at the Hero World Challenge.

“I think what Rafa’s done is extraordinary. I mean, he won the Australian Open on a broken foot,” Woods said. “The guy is beyond tough and beyond competitive. And he knows that Father Time is here. Every athlete faces it. And [in] some sports it happens faster than others.

“Unfortunately, just like every sport, you can get aged out. And I don’t want to see him go. I never want to see [Roger Federer] go. But that’s just what happens.”

🎙️ @TigerWoods talks to the media before teeing it up at the Hero World Challenge. https://t.co/9qrgeFWjeU

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) November 28, 2023

Woods further explained that fans around the world should not think about the possibility of tennis without Nadal, but enjoy the Spanish lefty while he is still competing.

“I just think that we should all enjoy watching him compete,” Woods said. “And watch him play and what he’s meant to the game and what he’s meant to all of us just to see the passion and how he plays and why he plays.”

Hamad Medjedovic may have been a late arrival in Jeddah for the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM, but he wasted little time bringing some drama to the 21-and-under season finale on Tuesday night.

The Serbian held off a spirited Alex Michelsen comeback and a bout of cramp in the final-set tie-break for a 4-2, 4-3(3), 3-4(3), 3-4(5), 4-3(4) victory to round out the opening day of action in style in Jeddah. Medjedovic deployed his heavy forehand to great effect throughout the two-hour, 27-minute encounter and fired 47 winners, including 14 aces, to prevail in the third-longest match in Next Gen ATP Finals history.

“It’s a very special feeling to win my first match at this tournament,” Medjedovic said. “When he levelled at two sets all I felt he had the momentum after I didn’t use the chances that I had.”

The 20-year-old only touched down in Jeddah at 1 a.m. on Monday morning due to being part of Serbia’s team at the Davis Cup Finals, but he appeared to have acclimatised quickly to his new surroundings. Medjedovic’s consistent powerful striking kept Michelsen under pressure as he opened a two-set lead, and he later said that he felt comfortable with the new rules and innovations in use this week.

“I was lucky that I played last match [today],” he said. “I watched these guys and saw how they were doing, and I was okay with the rules.”

After Michelsen dialled in behind serve to roar back into the pair’s maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting, Medjedovic was serving at 2-2 in the fifth set when he was struck by a bout of cramp in his calf. After holding on for 3-2, he took big cuts at the ball to try and shorten points, a tactic which ultimately paid off as he won the first three and the final four points of the tie-break to move to 1-0 in Red Group.

The second Serbian to compete at the Next Gen ATP Finals after Miomir Kecmanovic in 2019, Medjedovic has risen 147 spots from No. 257 to No. 110 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings this season. His next test in Jeddah is a clash with second seed Luca Van Assche on Wednesday night, when Michelsen will hope to notch his first win of the tournament against Abdullah Shelbayh.

Arthur Fils and Flavio Cobolli will meet in a clash of undefeated players Wednesday afternoon at the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM in Jeddah.

The top-seeded Fils made a good start to his run at the 21-and-under tournament on Tuesday when he battled past Italian Luca Nardi in five sets. The Frenchman will try to maintain his momentum against Nardi’s countryman, Cobolli, with both stars 1-0 in Green Group. Fils admitted to having to adjust to the special ruleset, including no warmup on court immediately before the match.

“It’s a mental adjustment, but it’s also a physical one,” Fils said. “Normally I never play before a match. Today I had to play right before with my coaches.”

Cobolli, who last month cracked the Top 100 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings for the first time, defeated 2022 Milan semi-finalist Dominic Stricker in four sets.

In an evening session match between the other two undefeated players, second seed Luca Van Assche will take on Serbian Hamad Medjedovic, who closed the event’s opening day with a thrilling five-set win against American Alex Michelsen that ended at 12:49 a.m. local time. 

Medjedovic will take confidence from holding off Michelsen’s comeback attempt from two sets down. The Serbian is coached by former World No. 12 Viktor Troicki.

Van Assche pushed Medjedovic’s countryman, World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, to three sets in Banja Luka earlier this year one round after upsetting former World No. 3 Stan Wawrinka.

In the afternoon session, Nardi will play Stricker and in the evening Shelbayh will face Michelsen.

ORDER OF PLAY – WEDNESDAY, 29 NOVEMBER 29 2023

CENTRE COURT start 3 p.m.
[3] D. Stricker (SUI) vs [7] L. Nardi (ITA)

Not Before 4 p.m.
[1] A. Fils (FRA) vs [5] F. Cobolli (ITA)

Not Before 8 p.m.
[4] A.Michelsen (USA) vs [WC] A. Shelbayh (JOR) [8] [2] L. Van Assche (FRA) vs [6] H. Medjedovic (SRB)

Arthur Fils knows what he wants from a tennis match.

Whether watching at home or strutting his stuff on court himself, the #NextGenATP Frenchman values style just as highly as he does substance. Fils attributes that belief to a generation of natural-born French entertainers whom he grew up admiring.

“I watched a lot of Gael Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and of course I know Yannick Noah because he won Roland Garros,” Fils told ATPTour.com. “[Style] is so important, because when you watch a tennis match you don’t want to be on the couch and just see one game, one game, one game. You want to see some highlights, and I think with Monfils, Tsonga and the backhand of Richard Gasquet, we saw a lot of highlights.”

The 19-year-old Fils demonstrated some of his own shotmaking ability on Tuesday in Jeddah, where he beat Luca Nardi in his first match as top seed at the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by NEOM. Fils is in Saudi Arabia attempting to cap a breakthrough year, during which he rose from No. 249 to No. 36 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings and lifted his maiden ATP Tour trophy in Lyon.

That title run at a clay ATP 250 was one of a series of impressive performances Fils produced in his homeland this season. He reached an ATP Challenger Tour final in Quimper in January and back-to-back semi-finals at indoor ATP 250s in Montpellier and Marseille in February before his Lyon triumph. Some players struggle to handle the expectations of a home crowd. Fils relishes it.

“The home support is incredible,” he said. “Us guys are playing for this kind of energy, for this kind of crowd. When you play at home, everyone is supporting you, everyone is screaming your name. It’s something deeper and I think if I’m French, and I’m going to play elsewhere, it is not going to be the same as when I’m playing at home. We are playing for this kind of stuff.”

A country steeped in tennis history, France’s wait for a men’s singles Grand Slam champion this year stretched to 40 years. Public expectation for a first male major winner since Noah at Roland Garros in 1983 is something that the likes of Monfils, Gasquet and the now-retired Tsonga have all been burdened with.

None of those players have managed to break the duck, but Fils still views his more experienced compatriots as a vital source of advice as he prepares to lead his country’s charge, alongside fellow #NextGenATP Frenchmen such as Luca Van Assche and Arthur Cazaux, in the years to come.

“They help me a lot in the locker room, on the court and off the court,” said Fils of the older French players on Tour. “I don’t have any pressure [from the public], I just want to be as good as them or better than them, but no pressure.

“My goal in tennis is to enjoy every second I can on the court. To smile in every match that I’m playing and to try my best to win some great tournaments and if I can to go high in the rankings. I will try my best and I have some big goals.”

While being free-spirited on court is often seen as something of a French trait, Fils is not basing his own approach on any of his ATP Tour colleagues, past or present. He has already shown himself as a charismatic presence who enjoys responding to big atmospheres, and he is ready to push as high as possible in his own unique way.

“My explosiveness and my physical condition [are my strengths],” said Fils. “The way I play helps me sometimes, because the crowd likes to support me a lot in physical battles.

“It’s something in my personality to bring the energy. It’s not important for my game, but important for myself.”